I know this has been covered to death but: thermals are outrageous

[David]

So I did the thermal mod. 20x20x1mm copper shim, cooler master thermal paste and thermal pads on top of the heat synch. Usual stuff. Put minimal thermal paste, so not overpasted. Done the mod twice now.

I still hit 90+ degrees when gaming. Either power or thermal throttling kicks in depending on the profile in xtu and FPS drops.

How on earth does Chris get 60-70 degrees on BF4 with no throttling?

Is this the silicon lottery at work?

Any tips for lowering temps more? Undervolting helps a tiny bit, and I’m sure the mod is good as the back of the device gets hand searingly hot. I’m lucky if I get a consistent 1.5ghz once throttling kicks in. Sometimes drops as low as 600mhz and stays there.

I gave up a GPD win for the extra power I can’t use…..

[Algorithm]

Check the copper shim again and the dent on the aluminium heatsink. Are they totally flat?     I get temps of around 65-70c max on load with the mod.

Undervolting helps indeed. I undervolt in the bios by 70mv for the cpu,cache and 50mv for the gpu.   You can also reduce the power throttle so that it will not use any more than specific amount of power for gpu and cpu (which would throttle if so, but should prevent heat from going up too much)

Check your bios settings as well. perhaps reset to defaults and check again?

 

[David]

Thanks for the info. Is it possible to tell me exactly what you changed to undervolt in the bios? I didn’t want to start tinkering with mailbox msr values – whatever that means. A guide would be super helpful.

The copper shim is definately flat. When I pulled it off the first time it was stuck to the heatsync. I realised I used 0.8mm not 1mm. Do you think it’s worth using a thicker shim, or even 2 together?

 

 

[David]

In terms of power limits, in XTU I have set the following:

Turbo Boost Short Power Max :20W

Turbo Boost Max: 16W

In the bios I have set it to throttle at 80 C

I did the mod for the 3rd time and if I use the stock power limits it does hover around 60-70 C under load, but FPS sucks and power throttling kicks in.

In the end, using the above settings seem to be the only way to keep the GPU running at full speed. If I use stock power levels, power limiting kicks in and the GPU throttles to around 500mhz which kills FPS.  With this setup, temps hover around 80 C, GPU runs at around 850 – 900 mhz and CPU throttles to around 1.6 ghz. Keeps Doom (2016) running between 25 and 40fps.

Does this sound about right? What are others running in terms of power and how does it affect your temps? Seems like trying to balance power and heat, but everyone has different expectations of what can be achieved.

 

 

 

 

[Athish]

Hi David,

Can you please tell me how did you check thermal throttling ? Which software did you use ?

Thanks

[Algorithm]

David, them default temperatures sound about right after the thermal mod. (ofcourse this will mean that there will be power throttling if it exceeds certain amount of wattage maximum.   Thankfully this can be changed as you tried out, but will have an effect on temperatures even after the thermal mod.

Athish.  Intel XTU (Xtreme Tuning Utility) will be able to tell you when it is thermal or/and power throttling when you run the benchmarks (Graph indicator and status etc)

[Dhr. Jeep]

Hi David,

Any update? Did you adjust the voltages again or the specs as you gave them enough and does everything work well?

[Author]

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